Harris's Vulnerabilities on Issues

 Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.

Kevin D. Williamson at The Dispatch writes that Harris has vulnerabilities that Trump has not yet been able to exploit effectively:

There isn’t any serious person or analysis that finds Harris to be “by far” to the left of Bernie Sanders. But, even if there were, degrees of leftness or rightness are not especially useful in prosecuting a political case against a major-party nominee. Indictments of a candidate’s support of particular bad policies or opposition to particular good policies, however, really have to be answered. Harris has taken wrong—and unpopular—positions on everything from race-based college admissions to “Medicare for All” to the First Amendment. She has a pretty bad record on Trump’s hallmark issue, immigration, but Trump and his team cannot advance the conversation past the question of whether it said “border czar” on her business card (in part because the candidate gets distracted by his need to deliver disquisitions on Hannibal Lecter). Trump could do a Buzzfeed-style listicle of Harris’ three or five worst policy positions and hammer those home in a hundred speeches. But he is too lazy to do the modest work involved.

ABC poll has Harris winning the election on the strength of strong margins on mental and physical health, honesty, and values.

Trump still favored on the economy & immigration.https://t.co/FYkzI8XSwx pic.twitter.com/mHiyeKVd16

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 18, 2024

Who Trump Is and What He Would Do

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.     

Out of all the many “No really, guys, I’m gonna be a dictator” posts Trump has made over the years, this is top ten.

Don’t miss the promise to “root out” the “vermin.” Like all of our greatest heads of state. pic.twitter.com/rbuPjkDfEP

— Samuel Perry (@profsamperry) November 11, 2023

Michael Gold at NYT:

Former President Donald J. Trump, on a day set aside to celebrate those who have defended the United States in uniform, promised to honor veterans in part by assailing what he portrayed as America’s greatest foe: the political left.

Using incendiary and dehumanizing language to refer to his opponents, Mr. Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Mr. Trump said Saturday in a nearly two-hour Veterans Day address in Claremont, N.H.

Mr. Trump accused Democrats and President Biden of trying to roll back his efforts to expand veteran access to health care, causing soaring inflation, pushing the country to the brink of World War III, endangering the troops in Afghanistan and of lying and rigging elections.

VIDEO HERE 

Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan at NYT:

Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.

To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.

To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.

...

 Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.

And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

Trump: We had no terror during my administration. The only terror we had was Nancy Pelosi. Crazed lunatic. What the hell was going on with her husband? Let’s not ask. She had a wall around her house. *laughs* It didn’t work very well. pic.twitter.com/ioqQCdm8ah

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 11, 2023

He is educating Americans to love autocrats, whether they are Communists or Fascists does not matter. Power matters. https://t.co/XEzvIstxj0

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) November 12, 2023

Asians and Republicans

Our more recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voter demographics .

At The Liberal Patriot, Seth Moskowitz analyzes a small but significant GOP shift among Asian Americans:

What makes the 2022 midterms so noteworthy, then, is that they represent a break from the decades-long trend toward Democrats. And when you drill down into the numbers, it becomes clear that two issues in particular are responsible for the Asian American backslide toward Republicans: public safety and education.

Let’s start with the former. As violent crime surged in cities throughout the country in 2020 and 2021, the Democrats in charge of many of those cities largely failed to respond with an effective message or policy agenda. Rather than prosecuting criminals and getting repeat offenders off of the streets, many Democrats took a “root causes” approach that came across as quixotic and ineffective. Moreover, following George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, many people, fairly or not, began to see the Democratic Party as anti-police. For many Asian Americans who live in urban areas, the visible erosion of public safety was unacceptable—and they blamed Democrats for letting it happen.

The first sign that this could pose an electoral problem for Democrats came in early 2022 with the effort to recall San Francisco’s progressive District Attorney, Chesa Boudin. Simmering fury about Boudin’s handling of crime and his seemingly indifferent attitude towards the victims of crime, many of whom were Asian American, eventually boiled over into outrage. And while every major racial demographic favored recalling Boudin, Asian Americans were by far the most supportive, with around 67 percent supporting the recall and only 13 percent opposing.

Frustration about crime wasn’t isolated to San Francisco. Asked in a national poll ahead of the midterms how important crime was to determining their vote, 85 percent of Asian Americans said it was “extremely” or “very” important. And when asked which party handles crime better, Asian Americans broke about even between Democrats and Republicans. Compared to other issues like health care, immigration, and gun control, on which Asian Americans overwhelmingly prefer Democrats, crime is a striking outlier.

The other issue most responsible for Asian Americans’ rightward shift is education. For many Asian Americans, especially those who are immigrants or low-income, education represents the step ladder for reaching a better life for themselves or their children. In recent years, however, Democrats have begun to fold up that stepladder in the name of racial equity. Across the country—from San Francisco to Boston to New York City and beyond—public school systems have tried to restructure the admissions process for “gifted and talented” schools and programs. By replacing academic assessments with lottery systems or other subjective evaluations, these proposals would dramatically reduce the number of Asian American students admitted, sometimes by as much as 40 or 50 percent.

The response from Asian Americans? Anger, resentment, and an electoral backlash. In San Francisco, Asian Americans drove the recall of three school board members who had rammed through one such admissions change. In New York City, frustration with a new admissions process that replaced academic screenings with lottery systems for hundreds of selective public middle and high schools eventually drove Mayor Eric Adams to roll back the unpopular reform.

And while admissions changes like these are certainly animating for many Asian Americans, Democrats are pushing plenty of other education policies that are likely just as politically toxic. One example is California’s attempt to eliminate honors-level classes and prohibit schools from sorting students according to academic achievement. Another is the ongoing attempt to encourage colleges to consider race and ethnicity when deciding which students to admit, something that only 21 percent of Asian American adults support according to a recent Gallup poll. In short, Democratic attempts to meddle with education in the name of equity and social justice at the expense of equality and fairness are driving away Asian American voters.

Affirmative Action and 2024

 As we note in Divided We Stand, the defeat of California's Proposition 16 was the most underreported political story of 2020. Like most other Americans, California voters oppose race-based college admissions

Hannah Demissie at ABC:

A majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, though the country is more divided on other high-profile rulings and increasingly viewing the court as driven more by politics than the law, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action programs in cases involving whether public and private colleges and universities can continue to use race as one factor among many in student admissions.

A little more than half of Americans – 52% -- approve of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, while 32% disapprove and 16% saying they don't know.

Republicans and Asian Americans

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

 Ruy Teixeira at AEI:

Even in 2020, there were signs of defection in congressional races in California and in other local races. Like Hispanics, Asian voters were concerned about public safety and rejected demands to defund the police. Asian voters in California, New York and Virginia were also upset by the Democrats’ support for aggressive affirmative action policies that would be at their expense, since in gifted and talented high schools and in top-tier colleges, they were enrolled at percentages well above their percentage in the population and would be harmed by the imposition of the kind of quota systems Democrats were supporting. Partly in reaction to this, Asian neighborhoods in New York City swung by double digits toward Trump in 2020. In California, Asians, as well as Hispanics, played a large hand in the defeat of the affirmative action referendum, which lost by 57 to 43 percent.

In 2021 and 2022, Democrats also suffered from defections among Asian-American voters. In Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial contest, victorious Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin got 44 percent of Asian votes. In that year’s New York mayoral contest, Republicans also improved over their 2017 performance by 14 points in heavily Asian precincts.

In 2022, Asian voter defection from the Democrats was more broad-based than in 2020. Nationwide the Democratic advantage among Asian voters declined 12 points relative to 2020. And there were abundant signs that Asian voters in many urban neighborhoods were slipping away from the Democrats. In New York City, the only precinct in Manhattan to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was in Chinatown. In Brooklyn and Queens, Zeldin outpaced Democrat Kathy Hochul in the heavily Chinese 47th and 49th Assembly Districts and 17th State Senate District in Brooklyn. Zeldin also won the 40th Assembly District based in Flushing, which is dominated by Chinese and Korean immigrants.

More detail on these defections has just been provided by a very detailed New York Times analysis of Asian voter shifts in the Zeldin-Hochul gubernatorial election

The Politics of Affirmative Action

 As we note in Divided We Stand, the defeat of California's Proposition 16 was the most underreported political story of 2020.

John Ellis at WSJ:

What nobody realized was that the entire country had become increasingly hostile to the use of race in such decisions. A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.

But as the public attempted to slam the door shut on racial preferences, the universities were busy trying to open it wide. The stealthy end-runs around the law gave way to support for “equity”: the desire for racial proportionality in all things—never mind that the Supreme Court has held that quotas in college admissions are unlawful. Accordingly, many colleges have begun to abandon the use of test scores in applications.

In line with this hardening of campus attitudes, increasingly powerful diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies arose to achieve these aims. Consider The University of California, Berkeley, which now has a Division of Equity and Inclusion, a title that gives it a standing on campus equivalent to its Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The university’s division has an array of highly paid managers. Eight have the title “director,” one of which is for “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” and there are several assistant vice chancellors. Similar offices abound on campuses across the country, where they are major actors in promoting all manner of progressive causes, from social justice to critical race theory and anticapitalism.

Texas GOP Platform

Our book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.  Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  

The 2022 Texas GOP platform:

• All attempts by the judiciary to rule in areas not constitutionally granted to the judiciary, including abuses of the “commerce clause,” the “general welfare clause,” and the “supremacy clause,” should be nullified. 
• We oppose all executive orders, whether by a president, a governor, or a loca official, that go beyond administration of executive authority and have the effect of legislation. We call upon the Texas Legislature or local lawmakers to nullify such executive orders.
• Repeal and/or nullify the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968.
• Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified. Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.
• The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment creating an electoral college consisting of electors selected by the popular votes cast within each individual state senatorial district, who shall then elect all statewide office holders.
• We urge that the Voting Rights Act of 1965, codified and updated in 1973, be repealed and not reauthorized.

Network of Election Deniers

 Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Trump and his minions falsely claimed that he won the election, and have kept repeating the Big Lie.  And we now know how close he came to subverting the Constitution.  

Alexandra Berzon at NYT:

An extensive review of Ms. [Cleta] Mitchell’s effort, including documents and social media posts, interviews and attendance at the Harrisburg seminar, reveals a loose network of influential groups and fringe figures. They include election deniers as well as mainstream organizations such as the Heritage Foundation’s political affiliate, Tea Party Patriots and the R.N.C., which has participated in Ms. Mitchell’s seminars. The effort, called the Election Integrity Network, is a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing think tank with close ties and financial backing from Mr. Trump’s political operation.

Ms. Mitchell says she is creating “a volunteer army of citizens” who can counter what she describes as Democratic bias in election offices.

...

Ms. Mitchell’s trainings promote particularly aggressive methods — with a focus on surveillance — that appear intended to feed on activists’ distrust and create pressure on local officials, rather than ensure voters’ access to the ballot, they say. A test drive of the strategy in the Virginia governor’s race last year highlighted how quickly the work — when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud — can disrupt the process and spiral into bogus claims, even in a race Republicans won.

...

 The Republican National Committee’s involvement is part of a return to widespread election-work organizing. For nearly 30 years, the committee was limited in some operations by a consent decree after Democrats accused party officials in New Jersey of hiring off-duty police officers and posting signs intended to scare Black and Latino people away from voting. The committee was freed of restrictions in 2018.

This year, its multimillion-dollar investment includes hiring 18 state “election integrity” directors and 19 state “election integrity” lawyers. The party has so far recruited more than 5,000 poll watchers and nearly 12,000 poll workers, according to the committee. These efforts are separate from the Election Integrity Network, said Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman.

But in multiple states, the R.N.C. election integrity directors have been involved in Ms. Mitchell’s events. Ms. Vaughn acknowledged that party officials participate in events hosted by other groups to recruit poll workers and poll watchers. She noted that in many states poll monitors must be authorized by the party. The R.N.C. is training its monitors to comply with laws protecting voting rights, she said.

Georgia Voting Law

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses voting procedures:

NYT sums up major features of Georgia's new voting law:

• Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
• There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.
• It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
• Drop boxes still exist … but barely.
• Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.
• Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.
• Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.
• If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.
• If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
• With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
• Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).
• With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.
• The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.
• The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.
• The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.
• Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.

Selling Voting Limits

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses disputes over voting rights and election security.  

It's all true.

Here's the best three paragraphs I've read, maybe ever, on the extraordinary cynicism, deceit and anti-majoritarian nature of the modern Republican leadership.

Please read how the GOP is fighting H.R. 1. And thank you, @JaneMayerNYer!https://t.co/zeev29LboB pic.twitter.com/jGhWlObfWW

— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) March 29, 2021

Georgia Voting Law

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses disputes over voting rights and election security. 

“But the lawsuit also exposes — in a fresh way — the appalling dishonesty of Republicans who continue using former president Donald Trump’s lie about the election to justify voter suppression efforts everywhere.” https://t.co/gb1hBZarEE

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 26, 2021

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a massive new voting law that places restrictions on absentee voting and reduces the number of absentee drop-boxes, as well as making it a crime to pass out food or drinks to voters waiting in line. https://t.co/KSF6W2Q55p

— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) March 26, 2021

GOP and Election Security

Our forthcoming book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.

Kevin Kosar at AEI:

The GOP should also take heart at who voted for them. Professor Andrew Busch of Claremont McKenna College points out “Trump gained four percentage points among blacks (to 12%), four among Latinos (to 32%), and seven among Asians (to 34%).” One exit poll found nearly one in five Black men voted for Trump. In Florida, which so many pollsters had all but given to Joe Biden, Trump triumphed thanks to Latino votes.

At the state level, Republicans also did well. They won eight of 11 races for governor and currently occupy 27 of 50 gubernatorial mansions. Republicans also have majorities in 29 of the 50 state senates and half the lower chambers. And Republicans achieved all this despite the nation suffering from a pandemic and economic tumults, as well as running with President Trump’s high disapproval ratings.

The GOP should be looking at all these positive developments and thinking about ways to replicate and expand them. But no. Instead, many Republicans see 2020 as a disaster, and blame fraud — which they failed to prove — and high voter turnout for their defeats. Even worse, they are advocating policies that are all but certain to reduce voter turnout.

In recent weeks, state legislators have proposed reducing the time allowed for early voting, eliminating ballot drop boxes, and disallowing poll workers from correcting clerical errors on ballots (e.g., adding the voter’s zip code if she forgot to write it down. Absent corrections, these ballots would be thrown out.) They also have introduced bills to reduce access to absentee voting by forcing individuals to apply each year, and they would mandate that absentee ballots be notarized. (Notaries public must be elated at the prospect of millions of new customers.) They also have targeted same-day voter registration, which helps increase the percentage of first-time voters to participate. Gobsmackingly, one legislator is even advocating a law that expressly allows the legislature to throw out the state’s presidential electors if legislators dislike it.

This strange lack of confidence in the GOP brand was aptly expressed by a Republican elections official in Georgia. The 2020 election was “terrible” for her party, so the state’s rules need to be changed “so that we at least have a shot at winning.”

This is not a good look for the GOP. Not least, it is out of step with the preferences of most voters, who like to have the choice to vote early or absentee and who do not want to be forced to navigate red tape to do so.

Mail Ballots, Voting Rights, and the Census

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Top WH Econ Adviser Larry Kudlow weighs in on stimulus negotiations, says "voting rights … that's not our game.” pic.twitter.com/OkE8nWfpJC

— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2020

Chuck Todd, Carrie Dann, Ben Kamisar and Melissa Holzberg at NBC:

• Trump installed a new Postmaster General (who was a campaign donor) who instituted new cost-saving measures that have slowed mail delivery nationwide and sparked fears about absentee ballot delays.
• He explicitly said yesterday that he would block proposed emergency funding for the Postal Service, adding that USPS doesn’t “have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess.
• He appeared to put more stock in an intelligence report finding that China prefers a Biden presidency than in Russian efforts to denigrate Biden, despite intelligence officials saying that pro-Trump election interference from Russia “was the far graver, and more immediate, threat.
• He equated foreign interference from Russia to Democrats “meddling” in the election because they are promoting mail-in balloting during the pandemic.
• He suggested in a tweet that Florida’s mail-in ballots are more trustworthy than other states’ because Florida has had “two great Republican governors.”
• The president’s son-in-law reportedly met in person with Kanye West, who is trying to get on ballots nationwide and recently did not deny that he’s doing so as a spoiler to Biden’s campaign.
• GOP operatives in at least four states have aided West’s attempts to get on the 2020 ballot

William H. Frey at Brookings:

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration issued a memorandum seeking to remove undocumented immigrants (“illegal aliens” in the memo’s words) from the census headcount that serves as the basis for reapportioning House of Representatives members among states. Then, on Monday, the Census Bureau announced that they would be cutting short the headcount by a month. In both cases, these changes will result in an undercount of demographic groups that are not part of Trump’s political base.

The plan to omit undocumented immigrants for congressional reapportionment falls in line with the administration’s failed proposal to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, which was struck down by the Supreme Court last year. After the ruling, Trump ordered the development of a database—using federal sources such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration—which could be used to identify undocumented immigrants.

John Lewis, RIP

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and relations with the African American community. ELast year, he told several Democratic congresswomen to "go back" to their countries.

President Trump arrived at his golf club in Sterling, VA at 9:09am, according to pool reports.

Neither the President nor the White House has issued a statement or responded to request for comment on the passing of John Lewis.

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) July 18, 2020

If you want to know why @realDonaldTrump has been silent on @repjohnlewis death, look no further than this remarkable video of John Lewis saying it is time to begin impeachment proceedings on Donald Trump.https://t.co/OKh6h3X32D

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) July 18, 2020

Just retweeting this. https://t.co/RPCYHqpnja

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) July 18, 2020

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2017

John Lewis said about my inauguration, "It will be the first one that I've missed." WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017

"thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in....he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president." Sound familiar! WP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017

"Go Back" and "Too Bad"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty. The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. Earlier this month, he told several Democratic congresswomen to "go back" to their countries.

Joe Davidson at WP:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cites words similar to Trump’s in a previously issued document explaining employment harassment based on national origin:

“Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.”

When Trump tweeted that Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he used the kind of racially offensive language that has led to hefty fines, as EEOC employment discrimination cases have shown.

The congresswomen can’t complain to the EEOC because Trump isn’t their boss — he has no authority over the legislative branch and the congresswomen, though he sets the tone for the government and appoints the head of the EEOC.

Private sector employees have successfully taken action against those who make or tolerate similar comments. A Federal Insider review of EEOC documents shows the agency has won lawsuit settlements on behalf of employees in at least a dozen cases over the past decade, in part because a supervisor or colleague said “go back” to an employee in a bigoted context.

Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2019

Noose Lady and GOP Outreach

In Defying the Odds, we discuss demographic gaps in the 2016 election.

Ashton Pittman at the Jackson Free Press:

U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that were set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals.

A group photo in the 1975 edition of The Rebel—the Lawrence County Academy Yearbook—illustrates the point. High-school cheerleaders smile at the camera as they lie on the ground in front of their pom-poms, fists supporting their heads. In the center, the mascot, dressed in what appears to be an outfit designed to mimic that of a Confederate general, offers a salute as she holds up a large Confederate flag.

Third from the right on the ground is a sophomore girl with short hair, identified in the caption as Cindy Hyde.

The photo, and the recently appointed Republican senator’s attendance at one of the many private schools that was set up to bypass integration, adds historic context to comments she made in recent weeks about a “public hanging” that drew condemnations from across the political spectrum.
..
Even to this day, Brookhaven Academy, from which Hyde-Smith’s daughter graduated in 2017, is almost all-white. In the 2015-2016 school year, Brookhaven Academy enrolled 386 white children, five Asian children, and just one black child, the National Center for Education Statistics shows. That’s despite the fact that Census statistics show Brookhaven is 55 percent black and 43 percent white, per 2016 Census estimates.

Needless to say, people like the  Noose Lady make it hard for the GOP to reach out to African Americans.  And the GOP has been failing at outreach for decades.

In August of last year, Kathleen Gray reported at The Detroit Free Press:

The timing couldn't have been more awkward.

Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, came to Detroit on Monday to try to reach out and and attract African-American voters to the GOP.

But her visit came 48 hours after a violent and deadly weekend of rioting in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered to protest the removal of a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Their confrontations with protesters of their movement culminated with an Ohio man driving his car through a crowd of protesters, killing a woman and injuring 34 others.
Unlike many politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties who condemned the violence and the white supremacists who sparked it, President Donald Trump denounced the violence from "many sides" and refused to call out the white nationalists by name.

 AP reported in March 2013:

Reeling from back-to-back presidential losses and struggling to cope with the country’s changing racial and ethnic makeup, the Republican National Committee plans to spend $10 million this year to send hundreds of party workers into Hispanic, black and Asian communities to promote its brand among voters who overwhelmingly supported Democrats in 2012.

As noted on the Besstte Pitney blog, RNC has made repeatedly made similar efforts for more than thirty years.

On December 25, 2003, Darryl Fears wrote in The Washington Post:

Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said increasing his party's share of the black vote is "a top, top priority."

The party is looking into establishing chapters at historically black colleges and universities, he said. Gillespie recalled Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) telling him that the GOP should target black voters between 18 and 35 "because they are most likely to not identify as Democrats."

During a trip to Pittsburgh in July, Gillespie said, he met with Marc H. Morial, the new president of the National Urban League. While in Detroit last month, Gillespie said, he talked for two hours with editors at the Michigan Chronicle, one of the nation's few black daily newspapers. The party has arranged with American Urban Radio to broadcast a weekly message to the huge African American audience the network reaches.

Gillespie declined to specify how much the party will spend, saying he did not want the Democratic leadership to know. "But we're budgeting for it," he said.

On January 14, 2000, Mary Anne Ostrom wrote in The San Jose Mercury News:

Saying they want to bring "two-party democracy" to the Latino community, Republican leaders at their winter meeting in San Jose on Thursday announced a $10 million nationwide ad campaign to boost the GOP's image with the fast-growing, but largely Democratic, electorate.

To tailor its effort -- which will include extensive advertising in English and Spanish in California -- the Republican National Committee released a few results from a 1,000-person nationwide poll that they say shows about a quarter of likely Latino voters have no deep ties to Republicans or Democrats.

"They are up for grabs," RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson said at a press conference, surrounded by Latino politicians, state party leaders and media consultants.

On September 12, 1997, Scott Shepard wrote at the Cox News Service:

On Tuesday (9/16), for instance, the party will announce its latest minority outreach program, the first serious effort at attracting minorities to the GOP since the short chairmanship of the late Lee Atwater.

''We've got a lot to overcome,'' Michael Levy, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, acknowledged in an interview Friday. ''But we know that we're reaching out to people who share our beliefs ... and it's time to connect all the dots.''

The GOP with an obvious eye toward the 1998, and even 2000 election campaigns plans to spend $ 1.2 million over the next year to promote its ''New Majority Council,'' which will be charged not only with recruiting minority candidates but also with getting the GOP message out to minority groups.

More importantly, and in contrast to Atwater's largely rhetorical ''Big Tent'' efforts, the ''New Majority Council'' will become an institution within the Republican National Committee (RNC) under the direction of party co-chair Pat Harrison.

''We're going to take this a step beyond anything that Lee tried to do,'' said Levy.

On September 11, 1997, Rachel Van Dongen wrote in Roll Call:

On Tuesday night, an all-star cast - including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss), House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga), Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson, and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman John Linder (Ga) - turned out for a fundraiser sponsored by Americans for a Brighter Future, a PAC aimed at recruiting minority Republican candidates.

Our goals are very simple," said Raynard Jackson, the founder and head of the group who has long been active in GOP circles, working for Sen. Kit Bond (Mo) and ex-Sen. John Danforth (Mo), with whom he helped push the nomination of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "To get more minorities elected and interested in the Republican party."
...
"The party has demonstrated that they are very serious about minority outreach and I am convinced that we're going to take that message into 1998 and 2000," Jackson added. "I guarantee you that we'll see a browning of the Republican party."
...
Besides the turnout at the event on Tuesday, NRCC Chairman Linder said the committee, with the help of Hispanic Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (Texas) and Watts, is paying greater attention to minority recruitment this cycle.

"We're emphasizing minority outreach more than we ever have before," said Linder.
And on a national level, RNC chair Nicholson and co-chair Pat Harrison are also intent on expanding minority participation in the "big tent" party. "We both share the strong goal (that) we want to make this party more inclusive," said Nicholson in a recent interview, adding that the RNC will soon be sending out newsletters in Spanish.

On March 12, 1995, A.L. May wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"Republicans don't have to abandon our principles to reach out to minorities. We have only to rediscover them," [Rep. J.C.] Watts told "Project Pioneer," a candidate seminar sponsored by the Republican National Committee.

The event's name denotes a new frontier for a party that has either ignored or been rejected by the black community for 30 years. It also reflects a renewed strategy by RNC Chairman Haley Barbour to follow the "big tent" game plan started by the late Lee Atwater in the late 1980s.

"We Republicans have made a terrible mistake over the years in not aggressively seeking the millions of black voters who agree with us on the issues," said Barbour, who argues that there is now a pool of conservative blacks willing to consider the GOP.

On May 21, 1991, RNC chair Clayton Yeutter told the National Federation of Republican women:

We're also going to work outreach very hard, the minority votes, in 1992. My personal impression is that -- and there are a good number of minority folks represented in the room here today. My personal impression is that minorities are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Democrats who simply promise them things and never ever come through with anything in the real world. It is apparent that the jobs that have been generated for minorities in the last decade or so come because of Republican administrations and Republican policies, not Democratic administrations -- because there weren't any -- and not Democratic policies. And we need to make sure that's understood.

On April 24, 1989, Richard Benedetto wrote in USA Today:

Republican efforts to attract more minority voters have shifted into higher gear heading toward the 1990 elections.

GOP National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater has been wooing Asians, Hispanics and blacks in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Atwater met with state Republican leaders Friday in Newport Beach, Calif., urging them to make reaching out to minorities a priority.

President Bush, encouraged by polls that show his support among blacks higher than predecessor Ronald Reagan's, will speak at the May 13 commencement of predominantly black Alcorn State University in Mississippi. Alcorn State President Walter Washington said he's invited every president since Lyndon Johnson; Bush is the first to accept.

''Even a small increase in minority votes (for Republicans) will make the difference between victory and defeat in many elections,'' Atwater told the GOP officials.

On January 22, 1989, David Broder wrote in The Washington Post:

[RNC Chairman Lee] Atwater's mentor, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), was a symbol and beneficiary of the white backlash that drove millions, including Thurmond, out of the Democratic Party and into the GOP. But now, Atwater said in an interview, "minority outreach is my command focus, and I'm going to insist it drive my daily schedule." 

Through appointments to administration jobs and party posts, Atwater hopes to spur the creation of "an alternative leadership structure" in black communities. "Affirmative action has worked, and there's now a much larger black middle class," he said. Pointing to surveys showing weaker Democratic identification among young, better-educated blacks, Atwater said, "The time is right for us to reach out to them."

Unstated by Atwater but acknowledged by other GOP operatives is the fact that the "outreach" strategy could not have worked with Ronald Reagan in the White House and the Justice Department leading the battle against civil rights rulings obtained under previous Democratic administrations.

On June 28, 1986, Clay F. Richards wrote at UPI:

The Republican Party embarked on a new program Saturday to enlist minority participation because, GOP Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf said, Republicans ''do not intend to turn our backs on black Americans.''

''No subject is more critical to the future of our party than minority participation,'' Fahrenkopf told the summer meeting of the Republican National Committee.

The RNC created an advisory commission on minority participation to study the problem. Historically, the Republican Party has done poorly among black voters. President Reagan got only 9 percent of the black vote in 1984.

Fahrenkopf named Edward Lujan, chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico, to head the commission.

''The purpose of the commission is to make recommendations to the RNC chairman with the goal of taking steps to attract more minority commmunities into our party's activities,'' Faharenkopf said.

On May 15, 1982, Richard E. Cohen wrote in National Journal:

It appears to be the Mission Impossible of the 1982 campaign, but Richard N. Richards, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is pulling no punches. "It's very important we elect one or more black Republicans to the House this year," he said in an interview. "I'm very confident we will."

In light of the Reagan Administration's repeated gaffes on civil rights issues and the high unemployment rate among blacks, Richards's goal may seem especially improbable. But the GOP already has two apparently strong candidates for November, and several others are possible. "We have to be concerned," said a Democratic political aide.

No black Republican has served in the House since 1928. In recent years, the national party has trumpeted its "outreach" efforts to expand the party's racial base. But Richards concedes those efforts have failed and says the way to succeed is to elect some black Republicans who can symbolize efforts to expand black trust in the GOP "I can't do that on my own," Richards said, adding, however, that things could change once Republicans make blacks feel comfortable within the party.

On July 13, 1980, Martin Tolchin wrote in The New York Times:

With black unemployment rising at a rate about double the national average, inner cities eroding and President Carter cutting social programs, Republican Party leaders hope this year to make inroads into the traditionally Democratic black vote.

''There's a lot of opportunity there,'' said Bill Brock, the Republican national chairman.
Detroit was selected as a convention site, at Mr. Brock's behest, at least in part because the

Republicans hoped to make it a symbol of a new commitment to older cities, to blue-collar workers and minority groups.

In their preconvention deliberations, the Republicans unanimously adopted a new platform plank on black Americans for the first time in modern history. The plank urged Federal programs for the inner cities, strong enforcement of civil rights statutes, and a nondiscriminatory system of Federal appointments.

The plank said: ''For millions of black Americans, the past four years have been a long trail of broken promises and broken dreams. The Carter Administration entered office with a pledge to all minorities of a brighter economic future. Today there are more black Americans unemployed than the day Mr. Carter became President.''

The plank was the work of Ronald Reagan's political strategists, who say that he will address the concerns of black Americans from a conservative viewpoint.

On August 8, 1977, Newsweek reported:

Bob Dole meant to win black friends with his conciliatory speech to the National Urban League last week, but he committed a gaffe that undid his mea culpas. "We may have gotten what we deserved in terms of the black vote in 1976," the Republican Vice Presidential candidate began. ". . . I'll confess we haven't done enough. I promise we'll do more. We can't run with Lincoln any more." Unfortunately, Dole's speech didn't end there. "Vernon [Jordon] said he was sending a warning to both parties," the Kansas senator declared. "We got ours. We got ours in spades." There was an audible ripple of groans. "That's not offensive to me," Dole said later. "In the Midwest that means we were clobbered . . . I don't think it's anything at all unless somebody makes something of it."